


On Soul-Matches, and Where to Find Them

by boromir_queries_sean



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Relationships of Destiny, Slow Burn, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, relationships of choice
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 12:43:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8751832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boromir_queries_sean/pseuds/boromir_queries_sean
Summary: Emma Cullen never expected to meet her soul-match.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nopholom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nopholom/gifts).



> This is for Nopholom, who, in addition to providing all of us with lovely Goodnight/Billy fic, has been making a very convincing case for Emma/Vasquez as a ship that needs to happen. 
> 
> This is only self betaed, so I apologize for any mistakes left in, for being relatively unpracticed as a fiction writer, and for the abrupt ending; I'll be adding another chapter or two once the movie comes out on DVD and I've had a chance to pay better attention to how these two interact once they get to Rose Creek.

Emma Grant doesn’t think about meeting her soul-match, not really. She likely won’t. Not ever. Her mama’s explained that their words are meant to give them hope, but that mostly souls don’t find each other again until they get to heaven, so that Emma ought to mind her lessons and read her bible as least as much as she reads her novels, and ignore the gossip of the other children about how sensational it would be to actually meet your match.

But while she doesn’t think of her soul-match, exactly, she can’t help but think about her words. At first, it’s because they itch to irritation coming in, in little wisps of black creeping up from the bottom of the ribs on her left side. They get clearer and cleared over the space of a fortnight, though, until Emma can cleanly read the abrupt sentence: “Your gun.” 

It’s peculiar, she thinks. It might be a statement, maybe a command, but either way it seems irregular, when she does start comparing it around with the words of her friends. Peggy’s, appearing clearly on her right hand, are “You dropped this, Miss” and Eliza has “Oh, hello” at the crook of her arm and Mary’s words, hard to read, nearly buried in her mess of dark hair, say “I’ve never had a better meal.” She can see how those things would be the first words said to a girl, but she can’t work out why someone would voice hers when she’s never even held a gun. 

She explains this to Mama and Daddy over breakfast one morning, and Daddy laughs and says that she’s right. Then he asks Mama, with a wink and a grin, if he can steal Emma for the day. Mama agrees with a smile of her own and packs them off with a few uneaten biscuits. 

Daddy takes her hand in one of his, his rifle clutched in the other, and they walk out back towards the trees. He points out a particular one, knotty all over and broad with branches low enough that it’s easy to get up into, indicating a broken branch hanging off the side of it. He raises the gun, aims, and shots it neatly off the tree. Then he kneels down next to her and shows her the gun in earnest. He points it down at the ground in front of them and names off all the parts of it, explaining to her how the bullets go in and how to sight along the barrel to best hit what you’re firing at.

She doesn’t hit anything that first day, once Daddy finally lets her try, but she feels more like somebody who might get to hear her words spoken even so.

~~~

Matthew Cullen blushes when she finally sees his words, which curl up the top of his right leg and over onto his pale buttock. Somewhere there’s someone who would get to ask him, “Have you read this one yet?” They’re good words, she thinks, and they fit the man she’s married, who is smart and kind and would probably have liked to have married someone who wanted to ask him about books the first time they spoke rather than someone who upended her drink into his lap at Samuel Wright and Polly Clark’s wedding and then sputtered at him, half apology, half laughter at the look on his face as the lemonade soaked into his trousers. 

She had liked him from that first day, as he kept smiling and celebrating, sticky, moist, and visibly stained. She came to love him over the course of several months, as he courted her, sometimes clumsily, but always with an open display of heart. 

He inadvertently tracks mud onto the floors she has recently swept, so focused on offering her the bouquet of wildflowers he’d procured that he’d neglected to knock the dirt from his boots, and he brings her small boxes of sugar plums when he has the pocket money to spare for it, although somehow the boxes always managed to arrive in her hand crushed, the candies within cracked into sharp pieces of sweetness. He takes her riding, always asks her to dance, despite the certainty that she’ll trod on his feet, because she loves doing so, and he reads to her from Miss Alcott’s latest work, doing separate voices for all of the children. 

She has no second thoughts when he finally asks for her hand. He isn’t her match and she isn’t his, but she’s sure that they’ll be happy together. 

~~~

Emma Cullen leaves Rose Creek with one of Matthew’s handkerchiefs tucked into her bag and her stomach churning up with nerves, Teddy wearing naked concern on his face as he rides beside her. She’s angry, savagerously so, and she hasn’t worked out how to stop it showing on her face yet, so his distress might not be just for the journey that lies ahead of them. 

Her temper has been her daily companion since she put Matthew in the ground, and she thinks it might be all that’s keeping her from falling to pieces. If she can do this, somehow barter their small sack of valuables into enough men, or men who are skilled enough, to stop Bogue from further plaguing the world, if she can gain reprisal for her husband’s death, do right by him, by the stranger who now has no chance of hearing their worlds spoken on this earth, then maybe she can find a way to let it go, and deal with the consequences. Not now, however, not yet.

She tries to pull on something that looks like a smile anyway, because maybe Teddy, at least, can find some tranquility if she stops looking so thunderous.

~~~

She hadn’t been prepared for the smell of the putrefying corpse, if ever one is prepared for that, but she’s less set to have a rope strung round her by the man Sam Chisholm had dragged them out to this ramshackle home to find. She squawks as she falls to the floor, but sits herself up straight away, ignoring the hurt of the splinters and dirt that have been scrapped into her arm. He’s tall and looks like he’s been through the mill; he seems looming as he stands over her, demanding, “Your gun.” 

The man – Vasquez - shows a great deal of teeth and far too much amusement as Chisholm starts his negotiations, yanking on the rope he has her bound with and talking about her but not to her. Later, when she’s had time to think about everything that’s happened, she’ll realize that she might have been scared if she hadn’t been so busy fuming.

She spits out orders to be let loose, tells him to stop his dang smiling, but he still seems like he’s having more fun with the situation than he has any right to.

~~~

The three of them have already met back up with Teddy, Faraday, and two new men before she realizes what she’d missed in being more mindful of what Vasquez had been doing to her rather than what he’d been saying, comprehends that her words had slipped from his lips. Her heart clamors in her chest and she tightens her grip on her reins, vaguely fearful that she might topple off her mount in her shock. And then, suddenly, she finds herself biting back laughter. 

Mama was wrong; this surely isn’t heaven, but her soul-match is right there in front of her, at loggerheads with Faraday, and she doesn’t know what the dickens she’s supposed to do.


End file.
